My eyebrows shot up when I saw the thick rope around his ankle. His jeans had ridden up and the rope had chafed away his dark skin. It looked raw and very painful. I took my hand from Colin’s belt and took a step to the side to see Caelan completely.
Immediately, and irrationally, I wished I hadn’t done that. On a chair three metres from Caelan was a badly beaten man. The rope was tautly stretched between one leg of the chair and Caelan’s leg. It seemed as if Caelan had moved away as far as he could from the man.
I swallowed and took one step closer. Then another. With every step, Caelan recited another fact, his movements becoming more agitated. I stopped.
“Seems like Shahab got to you before we could find you.” Manny lowered his chin and stared at the man on the chair.
“There are no active volcanoes in Australia because it sits in the middle of a tectonic plate!”
It took another second for me to recognise the man on the chair. It was Fran?ois. His hands were resting on his lap, all his fingers broken. His face had been beaten and was swollen so badly, it was hard to see any recognisable features. Or micro-expressions. The dominant expression on his face was pure physical agony.
He wasn’t dead. He raised his head a little to look at Manny and smiled. His mouth was filled with blood and it looked like he was missing a few teeth. Because of his injuries, I couldn’t determine the nature of his smile, but found it hard to imagine it could be genuine. Not when he had difficulty breathing, most likely because of broken ribs.
His legs looked unharmed, but I couldn’t see through his trousers. His ankles were also bound to the legs of the chair and a rope around his waist seemed to both hold him upright and seated. His bulky winter jacket hid any injuries to his torso.
“Caelan, bud.” Colin walked closer, but also stopped when Caelan flapped his hands again and viciously slapped his legs. Colin glanced at me.
“Doctor Lenard! Japan has ten percent of the world’s active volcanoes! The eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 had five hundred times the power of an atomic bomb!”
I closed my eyes for a second and held my breath as I considered Caelan’s facts. My eyes shot open and I shook my index finger at Fran?ois’ jacket.
“Jenny?” Colin looked from my finger to Fran?ois. “What’s wrong?”
“Volcanoes. Explosion.” I shook my finger again. “There’s a bomb under his jacket.”
Chapter TWENTY
“Bloody hell!” Manny leaned away from Fran?ois, staring at his closed jacket. “Is that true?”
“What?” Fran?ois’ voice came out hoarse. “A bomb?” His voice rose in volume and pitch and he shifted. “Get it off me! Get it off me!”
“Don’t fucking move.” Vinnie stepped closer, put his hand on Fran?ois’ shoulder and pushed hard. “We don’t know what will set it off. Stay as still as you can.”
Fran?ois froze, his eyes stretched as wide as they could with the swelling. “Get it off me.”
“The oldest fossil was found in a rock almost three and a half billion years old from western Australia!” Caelan slapped his thighs, looking at Vinnie’s hand on Fran?ois’ shoulder. “Mayflies live only twenty-four hours!”
“Wait.” Colin raised one hand to stop Vinnie when he reached out to lower the zipper of Fran?ois’ jacket. He was frowning at Fran?ois. “How can you not know there’s a bomb strapped to your chest?”
“Oh, God!” A tear rolled down Fran?ois’ face. “I... I passed out. He must’ve put it on me while I was out.”
“Who’s he?” Manny asked.
“Shahab.” Fran?ois raised his hand to wipe at his cheek, but moaned loudly. “He broke all my fingers. Every single one.”
More tears rolled down his face. I didn’t know what to think. His injuries and the swelling made it impossible to read his micro-expressions. Phillip had told us about the Fran?ois he knew many years ago. Given the current situation, I doubted that he’d changed his character traits and stopped being manipulative.
But after our conversation with him in Phillip’s conference room, I found it hard to imagine that he would choose this moment to be deceitful. His fear had been real then. It was real now.
“Where is Shahab?” Manny kept shifting his glare from Fran?ois’ face to his closed jacket.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know how I got here.” He looked past us. “Where are we? The storage place? Oh, God. How did I get here?”
“A Great Basin bristlecone pine in California is more than five thousand years old!” Caelan was busy losing his voice, the words a rough whisper. “It’s the oldest tree on Earth.”
I looked at the rope around his ankle and stared at the broken skin, dripping blood onto the floor. “We need to get this rope off him.”
Colin shook his head. “I think we first need to see what’s under Fran?ois’ jacket.”
“Carefully, big guy.” Manny raised his gun, but kept it pointed at the floor. “I’ll provide cover.”
Vinnie nodded and holstered his gun. He frequently boasted about the training he did with Daniel’s team, especially the basic training in identifying improvised explosive devices.
I barely breathed as I watched him carefully lowering the zipper. The sound of the slide gliding over each tooth was exaggerated in my mind, making me wince with each movement. The progress was slow, but smooth and Vinnie gently disconnected the zipper at the bottom.
I held my breath as he lifted the two front panels of the blue winter jacket and opened them to reveal Fran?ois’ torso.
“Oh, God. Oh, God.” Fran?ois’ voice trembled, tears streaming down his face. “Get this off me. Please, get this off me.”
“Did you tell Dan to bring the bomb squad, old man? Because we’re going to need them.” Vinnie straightened to give us a full view of Fran?ois’ chest.
Darkness immediately crowded my peripheral vision and my breathing became erratic. A small box was strapped over Fran?ois’ heart. It was the size of a smartphone, but four or five times as thick. The rope that went over the box and around Fran?ois’ chest seemed to be the same rope that tied Caelan to the chair. It seemed like the lid was only a thin piece of black plastic that covered the box and was held in place by the rope.
“Dan is bringing the bomb squad.” Manny leaned a bit forward and scowled. “Do you recognise it? Can you disable it?”
“It’s small.” Vinnie rested both hands on his hips, his thumbs pointing to the front. He was thinking. “I can’t see much. And I don’t think I want to mess around with it. In our last training, we were shown a bomb the size of a matchbox that could take out three of these buildings. I have no idea what explosives are in here. It could be just for this dude or to destroy the entire building.”
“Russia and the US are geographically only four kilometres apart, but there’s a twenty-one-hour time difference between them!” Caelan’s rocking increased.
I was fighting to not give in to my shutdown. I was also angry with myself. What had I been thinking to come here? I was in no position to be of any help to anyone. I didn’t know anything about bomb disposal. And I wasn’t capable of helping Caelan right now.
“I suggest we turn off our phones.” Colin reached into his trouser pocket. “We don’t know what will set it off.”
My throat was instantly dry. My phone was in my handbag in Vinnie’s SUV. I didn’t know if I would’ve been able to turn it off in any case. I felt frozen.
“The book says we should all leave.” Vinnie looked at Caelan and his top lip curled. “Not happening.”
“I’m not leaving Caelan.” Colin took a step closer to the young man still rocking. “Jenny?”
I shook my head. Even if I wanted to leave, I didn’t think my feet would obey signals from my brain at the moment. Colin, Vinnie and Manny were calm and composed. I was not. My mind was reeling and it was clear to me that Fran?ois was close to a breakdown as well.
“Bloody hell.” Manny exhaled loudly. “But the moment the bomb squad comes, we leave.”
“We’ll see about that,” Vinnie said. “What about Caelan? The rope?”